


I Swore I'd Never Known You Better

by sonnie



Series: The Cost of Craving Dark Instead of Light [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Cereal, Communication Failure, Good Intentions, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, M/M, Nostalgia, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 03:42:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonnie/pseuds/sonnie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Who really knows you at all if you cannot talk of your greatest thoughts?"</p><p> </p><p>The Frankenberry cereal was not a good idea.  Hermann can't quite remember why he thought it would be, now that Newton's crying into it.  This is probably at least a <i>little bit</i> his fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Swore I'd Never Known You Better

Hermann stares at the cartoon monster on Newton’s cereal box. He’s fairly sure he’s being mocked. Frankenberry is causing him real, physical pain and he hasn’t even opened the box yet. (It might have something to do with the three weeks’ worth of ration cards he spent buying it, it might not.) Cereal wasn’t a huge priority once kaiju attacks became commonplace, but society’s attempt at normalcy as well as a strong sense of longing for the past meant it was produced seasonally in America until 2020. Well past its expiration date, Hermann assumes it will still be good because sugary cereal contains so little _real_ food there isn’t really anything in it that can go bad. 

He’s not sure what it means, that a five-year-old box of contraband is the best-received gift he’s ever given. Newton’s running to his room to grab his phone—most likely so he can send a picture of it to Tendo—leaving Hermann alone for a moment. He never really looked at it when he purchased it, but staring at it now he’s struck by how nostalgic his coworker is. If Newton had known it existed he would have spent easily twice what Hermann had (assuming he’d had it) just because it reminds him of his childhood. 

Thanks to the Drift, Hermann’s seen exactly what that childhood was like. It wasn’t exactly a Shakespearian tragedy, but it couldn’t be called happy by any means. Newton only had one or two real friends growing up and was mostly avoided in class—too weird to even be ridiculed. He spent lots of time alone, and for the most part he liked it. But weekdays before school there would be conversations where he could pretend he existed in a real family, long moments when he felt loved and appreciated because someone cared to listen. 

Now Hermann’s mind is no longer exclusively his own. He has muscle memory of pouring cereal followed by the perfect amount of milk. He recalls the smell of artificial strawberry sitting in his nose after accidentally inhaling what can only be called sugar dust. The box stays closed but he can taste the grains, the strawberry, the Allura Red. He imagines a phone by his ear and hears an unfamiliar but comforting voice on the other line. He’s spooning cereal into his mouth eagerly to the sound of his father’s laughter, and—

Hermann gasps sharply. It’s been months, but sometimes he still finds himself swept away by recollections that clearly aren’t his. Even memories of events where they were both present are perplexing, like they’re being narrated from third-person perspective instead of first (Hermann) or second (Newton). It’s disconcerting; Newton perceives the world _very_ differently than he does. 

It’s his passion that amazes him the most, though, the sheer depth of feeling. He is a man of science but highly emotional, surprisingly so. Newton viciously defends his vulnerable spots. He’s raised hackles and bared teeth at all times; the heartbeat behind the façade is not so savage and really, Hermann would have never guessed how much Newton longed to crunch on a bowl of cereal and listen to his father hundreds of miles away, a hearty chuckle lingering in his ear for the rest of the day. 

And Hermann, for reasons he can’t identify, feels compelled to help him recapture that sweet, wistful feeling of nostalgia. The first part is easy, all things considered. It all comes down to money, and that’s easy enough. The second part, though…Hermann can’t exactly raise the dead.

“Hey,” Newt greets, the camera flash on his phone going off once the Frankenberry box is perfectly centered. Some things about him are very predictable.

Some things are not.

Hermann feels like he’s intruding on a private moment as Newton’s mouth softens into a tentative smile. His eyes light up as he reaches eagerly for the cereal box, something childlike and innocent shining in them so brightly it hurts to look at. Blunt fingertips run fondly over the cartoon image of Frankstein’s monster until he gently eases them under the cardboard flap. He’s uncharacteristically restrained as he carefully pulls open the bag and turns the box on its side, delighting in the distinctive ping of hundreds of pieces of cereal hitting the bowl like rain. Hermann follows the tilt of Newton’s wrist as he pours a generous helping of milk. 

For a moment Newton does nothing except stare at his food. His spoon makes several aborted attempts before he sits it down on the table suddenly. Hermann looks up and sees that Newton’s eyes are rimmed with red and no, this isn’t what he wanted. He wants Newton to remember the good times, not think about how Jacob Geiszler is— 

Hermann secretly thinks that Lars will live forever just to torment him. It’s so unjust when Newton’s father loved his son unconditionally and was loved so much in return. (Newton left the Hong Kong Shatterdome one Thursday in November and by the following Monday morning was back at work; only a week later did he find out his father had died.) And now Hermann’s gone and made a man with six doctorates—the man who helped save the world—cry into his cereal.

“I…I can’t eat this right now.” The way Newton’s voice cracks pathetically at the end breaks Hermann’s heart a little. “But I don’t want this all to go to waste. Could you maybe eat a little bit?”

Mouth open to automatically retort, Hermann clamps it shut and nods mechanically. Newton doesn’t permit anything he perceives as coddling so Hermann doesn’t dare look up lest his sympathy turn this awkward moment into an outright ugly one. He makes sure he doesn’t react when the bowl of pink cereal is quietly pushed in front of him or flinch when he finally pushes the first spoonful past his lips.

And _oh_ , it’s as vile as he feared. (Is it stale?—is it not stale?—he isn’t sure because this is poison and what is poison supposed to taste like?) The texture is grainy and the flavor so sickly sweet it turns his stomach. But now that the Breach is closed and Newton finally has time to grieve, Hermann figures he can do this one, small thing to help. And it will. Newton can evade and deny all he wants, but misery will catch up to him eventually if he doesn’t let them out. He is not just intellect, but heart, and that’s what makes him special and a little maddening.

The tattooed kaiju groupie he met in person eight years before desired so desperately not to be condemned, but he’d had done it anyway, violently and recklessly. Hermann poured his failed expectations into him—indulged in _how fucking disappointed_ he was—and used this bitterness to set up a pyre for Newton’s self-immolation. The man who rose from the ashes shoved a homemade PONS device onto his head and drifted with an alien brain fragment while practically giving him the finger.

Hermann knows he’ll never quite be able to forgive himself for doubting Newton. Yes, it was a manipulative thing to say as a parting shot, but Hermann gets it, really, why Newton said “you drove me to this.” He really _did_ , because proof his failures was the only thing that eased the disappointment he thought Newton was. It wasn’t about Hermann being right, but Newton being wrong (just for being Newton, _God_ ). 

“You don’t have to eat it all,” Newton says after a moment. His voice escalates along with his distress. “Cereal’s not really your thing. It’s fine, man.”

It’s a considerate thing to say that isn’t really like him, and nothing’s fine, not _really_. Hermann’s eating without really tasting it, mechanically devouring it until he registers the dull clang of his metal spoon clacking against the bottom of the empty bowl. He looks up and sees Newton’s worried face staring back at him—he actually reaches out and pushes the bowl away, as if he’s afraid Hermann will want to eat more.

“Jesus, I’m sorry I lost my shit over a bowl of goddamn Frankenberry. I’m okay now.”

His last statement is laughable. Hermann wants to look at him and say, _you’re just going to run off and do something else completely mad to forget about the last crazy thing you just did because your coping mechanisms are nonexistent_ ; or, _I’ll never stop worrying that someday you’ll get yourself killed because no one can every appease your insufferable martyr complex_ ; and especially, _you’re not okay and could you please stop pretending that you are, because now that I’m finally paying attention I can see through the bullshit_.

Somewhere in there he wants to say sorry, too, but nothing comes out at all. He decides to take a page out of Jacob Geiszler’s book and listen. He’s not sure why he does it, but he sits back a little in his chair and folds his hands gracefully on the table. It’s the kind of conciliatory gesture he never makes and Newton never receives, but somehow it conveys what he wants it to. 

“Newt.” It’s just a name, but it’s the one he prefers to be called, the name he’s withheld for years just to spite him. Hermann’s not sure he’ll ever be Doctor Geiszler again. 

Newton swipes his sleeves across his face and sniffles once; it’s almost cute. He looks uncomfortable, but he often does—knee bouncing inanely under the table and fingers tapping the edges of his chair. He also looks like he wants to bolt, which is not uncommon either. He opens his mouth but claps it shut immediately, sitting back in a huff. When he sees that Hermann’s mild expression hasn’t changed, he chews on his lip a minute before caving, eyes firmly locked on his cereal bowl.

“The day I got back to Hong Kong, I had to change my next of kin to ‘Monica Schwartz’ instead of ‘Jacob Geiszler,’” Newton says softly. “I backspaced over Dad’s name and put Mom’s. I mean, I love her, she’s my mom. But we’re not really close. It was bad when I was growing up. Even now, I get tuned out a lot. I get why; I don’t have a lot in common with people. Dad and I didn’t like many of the same things outside music, but that didn’t matter.”

Newton dares to lift his wide eyes meet his, as if he’s in utter disbelief that Hermann hasn’t ridiculed him yet. “We didn’t talk much about school or work. It’s not like we collaborated on my scientific breakthroughs or anything. But he might as well have. People kept telling me I couldn’t do this, I couldn’t do that, but he never did. He made me feel smarter than Einstein and cooler than Jagger. He listened to me before I was a boy genius or the guy who helped save the world.”

Seizing the box of Frankenberry, Newton hauls it to his chest possessively before casually pouring himself a bowl. “I made Uncle Gunter buy this every October. I’d sit at the table and talk to Dad about my Halloween costumes. I won a contest at school, once. I went as Godzilla. The other kids thought I cheated—that my parents helped me win. They didn’t know that nobody was around to do that for me.”

Newt’s eyes are trained at his cereal, the pale, nearly colorless rings of his green irises cold like glass. He eats the first bite like he’s savoring an expensive wine. His lips curve up into a grin. 

“It’s not quite the same as I remember.”

“It expired in 2023, so it probably isn’t,” Hermann informs him.

Newton cackles. “You’re trying to kill me, I knew it!”

It’s a joke but Hermann doesn’t laugh. Newton never says the right things and has accepted this about himself, so he merely drums his fingers on the table briefly before taking another bite. They’ve seen the insides of each other’s minds and still kind of suck at communicating courtesies like sympathy and kindness. Hermann’s not sure he wants to spend the rest of his life like this until it occurs to him that that’s how he’s been spending his life so far.

“That has to be the worst cereal in the world.”

“Uh, no, it’s the best cereal in the world. As someone who hasn’t even tried more than three cereals in his entire life, I don’t think you’re really fit to make that call.”

“Why would I care about how cereal tastes?”

“Maybe so you’ll stop making unqualified statements about cereals being the worst in the world when you don’t even have any frame of reference,” Newton counters. He actually sticks out his tongue, painted red with artificial dye. Hermann shudders.

“I know what tastes good, and that cereal definitely does not.”

“You like fruit, so I don’t understand why you hate this.”

“Fruit and _artificial fruit flavoring_ are completely different. Isn’t one of your doctorates in chemistry?”

“Yeah, so I could get paid to blow shit up—which is awesome, by the way. You really missed out going the physicist route.”

“Yes, the code I wrote for the Mark I Jaegers makes me terribly uncool. I think you’re jealous.”

“I mind melded with a piece of alien brain using garbage and a laptop because I’m an awesome rock star genius. _My_ success made _your_ success possible; fuck you.”

Irritation causes Hermann to jump to his feet, and before he can even stop himself he angrily rips open the Frankenberry box. Shoving his arm into the bag up to his elbow, he pulls it out to stuff a handful of cereal into his mouth. The horrible taste is worth it from the look of shock and horror that descends upon Newton’s face.

They’re in a flat, not a lab, so there are no kaiju entrails to sling or chalkboard erasers to throw, but their fighting isn't defined by something as banal as location. After a ferocious battle of tug-of-war, the entire room is showered in marshmallows and ghosts. There are two inches of cereal left in the bag, and Newton clutches it to his chest while shooting a venomous look his way. Once again Hermann’s dignity is compromised and it’s pretty easy to blame Newton for it, considering he literally _does not act this way_ around anyone else. Childish food fights aside, Newton brings out the very worst in him. 

Whatever pithy comment he’s about to lob dies on his tongue when he looks over and watches Newton surreptitiously inhale one last breath of strawberry-scented dust before closing the torn lid with something bordering on reverence. Hermann tries to ignore how he tucks the box under his chin protectively and thinks that nothing he’ll ever do will ever be perfect when it comes to Newton; one or both of them will always find a way to ruin it. How is this supposed to _work?_

But Hermann is resilient and Newton relentless. He is the immovable object to Newton’s unstoppable force; a Drift can’t alter their natures, only their perceptions. Newton’s mind is _complicated_ , like fucking Hogwarts or something. There’s structure and knowledge and baggage, whimsical and feral and dark. 

“Hey, Herms,” Newton starts quietly, and Hermann doesn’t rise to the bait and chide him for using that horrible nickname.

“Yes, Newton?”

(And one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the world should be what shade of green Newton Geiszler’s eyes are, because when they pin him down and he can’t move an inch, he really wants to know what to call it. It’s something between pistachio and mint, simultaneously warm and cold. When he smiles, like he is now, Hermann thinks maybe the poets he derides might be onto something, because this is one thing numbers can’t come close to explaining.)

“Um, thanks.”

 _Thanks for the reminder of your dead father? Thanks for making you cry? Thanks for arguing with you then completely destroying your present when you couldn’t resist being a shithead because I can’t stop provoking you for the life of me?_ Hermann's rarely proud of how he winds up treating him so he merely nods.

The chime of Newton’s phone indicates an incoming text from Tendo, and Hermann hears laughter as he sweeps up the mess he made. Newton is traipsing through the kitchen and leaving crunchy piles of crushed cereal (“This is why we can’t have nice things, Hermann!”) so he moves quickly. This is his life now, anchored to a man steeped in equal parts brilliance and sentiment. Math is no longer a safe haven; numbers can’t shield him from Newton Geiszler. The biologist scowls and brushes pink sugar off his feet into the trashcan, mumbling something childish before he texts Tendo back. He meanders to the living room and plops himself on the couch. He makes sure Hermann is standing far away before he fishes out the rest of the cereal, determined to finish it off before something bad happens to it.

No, this is not the existence he’d ever thought to pick, but Hermann’s seen the havoc that his expectations produce—has seen them corrupt the best friendship he’s ever enjoyed in his entire life. It occurs to him that he doesn’t really know what he wants or needs as he glances over at Newton, who playfully offers him a bite of cereal while provocatively wiggling his brows. Hermann rolls his eyes.

Ignoring the sad face Newton makes when he empties the dustpan (and ignoring the sad little faces on hundreds of tiny, sugary ghosts), Hermann eventually makes his way over to the couch to sit next to Newt. His fingers are stained pink and he calculates a 97.3% likelihood that he’s about to be covered in neon crumbs, but Hermann can feel his usually severe expression soften. 

This… _thing_ with Newton will never be straightforward. He’ll never be able to make Newton feel “smarter than Einstein and cooler than Jagger,” but he can listen all the same. Hermann knows he is uptight and critical, but he can't plead ignorance to this any longer; more than anything, Newton just doesn’t want to be judged. Yes, he’s egotistical and self-indulgent, but not much more than most people and definitely not more than Hermann. It's hard to look at Newton and see the parts of himself that he hates.

“Tendo’s jealous that I got Frankenberry for my birthday,” Newton says with a grin. 

Hermann can’t exactly chastise him when he’s not above bragging himself. And it’s not so much that they make mistakes, as long as they both stick around long enough to keep making new ones. That leaves plenty of time to change for the better.

Hermann reaches over and swipes a few pieces of cereal just to hear Newton’s squawk of indignation, because some things will always stay the same.

**Author's Note:**

> A Frankenberry reference because I had to work on Halloween, and therefore missed posting this on time.
> 
> I tried to write something cute and ended up with this. Yeah, I'm quite the failboat at fluff. :/ 
> 
> Title and quote are from the Blue Roses song "Greatest Thoughts."


End file.
